BEEKEEPER: IMPROVING FRONTLINE EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATIONS By Cam Patterson We first became aware of Beekeeper at Meat Business Pro when we did a Q&A with Dennis Brewster from HyLife Foods some months ago. At the time, he discussed how implementing Beekeeper’s employee focused mobile communication platform changed the game for how HyLife was able to work with their employees to ensure workplace safety practices during the pandemic. Since that time, the world is now fighting against COVID-19. The meat processing industry, like all manufacturing and processing industries, is still working against the odds, but outbreaks are still happening in some plants regardless of PPE, sanitizing, and safe distancing measures. We reached out to Daniel Sztutwojner, Chief Customer Officer and co-founder of Beekeeper, based in Switzerland, for a more in-depth discussion about how Beekeeper’s communication solution software for frontline workers caught the attention of the meat processing industry around the world during the time of COVID-19.
we identified as not only beneficial for the hospitality industry, but for any industry that typically has a high number of frontline workers. MBP: HOW DID BEEKEEPER GET THE ATTENTION OF THE MEAT PROCESSING INDUSTRY? DS: We had been working with Smithfield for some time when an article from the CDC created a lot of awareness on the work we were doing with them. Now we're working with four of the major meat producers in the world. Our platform is particularly advantageous to meat processors. Many of their frontline employees are not working on a computer so they were needing a realtime connectivity solution that would digitally enable their employees.
MBP: PLEASE GIVE OUR READERS SOME BACKGROUND ON YOURSELF AND BEEKEEPER. DS: I'm one of the co-founders of Beekeeper and we started the company based on our experience in the hospitality sector, working with hotels in Switzerland. We realized that a major challenge in the industry was frontline employees not having access to corporatewide collaboration tools. When you have frontline staff distributed across multiple properties, it’s virtually impossible to share information with any kind of effectiveness. A communication tool that could unify everyone in the organization in real-time, across multiple disciplines and dialects, is something that 6
MEAT BUSINESS PRO
February March/April 20214
2019 | 100TH ISSUE
meatbusinesspro.com
